The Lantern Maker’s Trace

I grew up in the low hills of eastern Kentucky, where the forests press close against the road and the creeks run dark with coal silt. The older folk in my family—my grandmother, my mother, her brothers—weren’t churchgoers, but they carried a different kind of faith, one in the old signs and the whispers of the hollow. They’d tell stories about the ‘lantern man,’ a figure who wandered the ridges at dusk, carrying a pale yellow light that lured folks off the path. Some said he was a miner who died in a collapse, still searching for his way out. Others said he was something older, something that wore the shape of a man to draw the living into the dark. The warning was always the same, and they said it in the same flat tone: ‘You don’t follow a light that ain’t meant for you.’

One autumn, when I was nineteen, the leaves turned early and a dry cold settled over the hills. I was home from college, and a few of my classmates had come up for the weekend, eager to see the ‘real Kentucky’ they’d heard about. They’d heard the stories from locals at the gas station, and they laughed them off, calling them backwoods nonsense. I, being the one who’d grown up with those stories, felt a twinge of pride. I told them I could show them something real, something that would change their minds. I didn’t know how, but I knew the woods, and I knew the old trace—a path that led up to the ridge where the lantern man was said to walk. I planned to give them a good scare, maybe use a flashlight with a yellow cellophane cover to mimic the light, and then take them back down for coffee and laughter.

That night, the air had a bite to it, and the moon was a thin sliver, casting almost no light. We parked at the end of a logging road and started up the trace, our boots crunching on dead leaves. My friends—Dan, Melissa, and a quiet guy named Pete—were joking, but I noticed their voices were lower than usual, and they stayed close to me. The trace was overgrown, and I had to push through briars that scratched at our jackets. After about half an hour, we reached a clearing where the old mine entrance gaped like a black mouth. I’d been there before, but tonight it felt different. The air was still, too still, and I could hear my own heartbeat.

I started my spiel, embellishing the story of the lantern man, adding details about a family that vanished on this very ridge in the 1930s. I raised my flashlight, the yellow cellophane casting a sickly glow, and pointed into the forest. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘there’s his light.’ And I expected to see nothing, just the dark. But there, between the trees, a light flickered. It was pale, like a candle flame behind dirty glass, and it moved—slowly, purposely, coming toward us. My heart seized. That wasn’t my flashlight; I still held it in my hand. The others saw it too. For a moment, no one moved. Then Pete whispered, ‘Is that you?’ I shook my head, my mouth dry. The light stopped, hovering about fifty yards away, just beyond the edge of the clearing.

Dan laughed, a nervous bark. ‘Nice trick, Kyle. You set that up before we came?’ I didn’t. I couldn’t speak. The light began to move again, but not toward us. It drifted parallel to the clearing, then made a slow arc, as if beckoning us to follow. Melissa grabbed my arm. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, her voice tight. But my feet were rooted. I remembered my grandmother’s words: ‘You don’t follow a light that ain’t meant for you.’ I knew I shouldn’t, but something in me—curiosity, a sense of bravado, or maybe something darker—pushed me forward. I took a step. Then another.

The light started to move away, and I followed, signaling for the others to stay. They called my name, but I didn’t listen. I pushed through the underbrush, the light always ahead, just out of reach. It was like a moth drawn to a flame, except I was the moth, and the flame was leading me somewhere. The woods began to close in, branches snatching at my clothes, roots tripping me. I stumbled into a small hollow, where the light stopped and hovered above a mound of earth. The ground was disturbed, as if something had been buried there recently. And then the light went out.

I stood in the dark, my breath fogging in the cold. I felt a presence, a pressure in the air. A voice, low and gravelly, came from behind me. ‘You should have listened.’ I spun around, but there was nothing. I ran. I crashed through the woods, branches whipping my face, until I burst out onto the trace, where my friends were waiting, their faces pale under the moon. Dan grabbed me by the shoulders. ‘What the hell, Kyle? Where did you go?’ I couldn’t answer. I just shook my head, and we hurried back to the car, not speaking.

We drove back to the house, and my uncle, who was sitting on the porch, took one look at me and said, ‘You went up there, didn’t you? To the old trace.’ I nodded. He sighed, his face grim. ‘I told you to stay away. That light ain’t never led anyone to good.’ He told me that years ago, a man from the next holler had followed that light and was found three days later, wandering in a daze, his clothes torn, unable to speak. He eventually drank himself to death. I didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, I went back with my uncle, as much to prove I wasn’t scared as to see if the mound was real. We found the hollow, but the mound was gone. In its place was a single, rusted lantern, its glass cracked, the wick burned down to nothing. My uncle picked it up, turned it over. In the base, scratched into the metal, were letters: ‘K.M. 1932.’ He showed me a faded photograph of a young man, my great-uncle, who had disappeared on this very ridge in 1932. I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the weather. I never went into those woods again, and I never told ghost stories again. But sometimes, on autumn nights, when the air is crisp and still, I think I see a pale light out of the corner of my eye, and I hear the echo of a voice: ‘You should have listened.’ And I know that the lantern maker is still looking for someone to carry his light.